The Best Blu-ray Player

After spending almost 25 hours with the best new Blu-ray players for 2015, we recommend the Sony BDP-S3500 for most people. The Sony offers integrated Wi-Fi and has the most popular streaming apps, plus the user interface has been improved this year, making it easier to access apps you want than on the other players we tested. It also leaves off features that most people don’t really need or care about, such as 4K upconversion and 3D playback.

Last Updated:
Nine months ago

The updated version of our favorite Blu-ray player, the Sony BDP-S3700, is now usually available at a better price than the S3500. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3700, we think getting the newer model is worth it for most people. We also expect to see more Ultra HD Blu-ray players launch at the CES trade show next month, and we will begin testing these 4K players so that we can make a recommendation in the new year.

Two years ago:
At CES 2016 we saw the first Blu-ray players that will finally utilize the potential of Ultra HD TVs. See below for more about Ultra HD Blu-ray players coming this year.

Two years ago:
Our guide is completely rewritten for 2015 with all new Blu-ray players from Sony, LG, and Samsung brought in for testing. The Sony BDP-S3500 is the best Blu-ray player thanks to its user interface, integrated Wi-Fi, and wide selection of the most popular streaming apps. It doesn’t have extra features most people don’t need and provides bit-perfect Blu-ray playback.

Two years ago: After a new round of research and testing we have a new pick: The $76 Sony BDP-S3500 offers fast Blu-ray movie playback and a large selection of streaming apps for a low price. We’ve spent over 100 hours and tested over a dozen Blu-ray players the past few years to determine the best model. Sony has revamped their interface for 2015 to make their players the easiest to use for both movies and online content. The BDP-S3500 includes Wi-Fi and other important features while skipping things, like 4K upscaling, that provide little value. Look for our updated guide in about a month.

Two years ago:
There are several new models we will be testing, so we're setting this guide to wait status until we come up with new picks.

Three years ago:
Dismissed two Yamaha players and two high-end Pioneers aimed mostly at audiophile types. See the competition section for details.

Three years ago:
After our previous pick was discontinued, we spent almost 20 hours testing the Blu-ray players of 2014. The LG BP540 has all the essential streaming services (many players don’t), plus a better interface and video quality than competitors.

Three years ago:
We're almost done researching a new pick for best Blu-ray player. This guide is set to wait status while we finish up.

Note: The updated version of our favorite Blu-ray player, the Sony BDP-S3700, can now usually be found at a better price than the S3500. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3700, we think getting the newer model is worth it for most people.

The BDP-S5500 adds 3D, which most people don’t care about, but otherwise it has the same great interface as our main pick.

If 3D playback is important to you, the Sony BDP-S5500 adds the capability and is usually a little more expensive. Since everything else is the same and most people don’t need 3D, the BDP-S3500 is a better pick for most if it’s available more cheaply.

The Oppo will give you the best picture from any disc, from DVD to Blu-ray, and has the best 4K upscaling available, but is short on streaming features.

Universally recognized as the best Blu-ray player available, the Oppo’s superior video processing will provide the best picture from any disc, with better DVD scaling than competing players and better 4K scaling than most TVs. An HDMI input means you can even process video from other sources like your cable box. Analog audio outputs and dual HDMI outputs let you connect the Oppo easily to complex setups. But it costs many times what other players do, so it’s for disc connoisseurs only.

The cheaper Sony lacks Wi-Fi and it isn’t as responsive as our pick, but it still has the good interface and movie playback.

If you don’t care about streaming, the Sony BDP-S1500 will do the job and save you a little bit of money. And if you don’t care about playing back discs, a good media streamer, like the Roku 2, will still outperform any Blu-ray player and is recommended if you’re really after streaming performance. For major streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, our pick will suffice.

Why you should trust us

From 2010 to 2014, I handled almost all the Blu-ray player reviews for Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity; I had nearly 50 come through my hands over that time. I subjected them to countless objective and subjective tests, and I worked to develop advanced test patterns to better measure performance. I even threw them on a $15,000 HDMI analyzer to verify their image quality. I know what makes a difference in a Blu-ray player and what you can ignore. This year and last I’ve tested a dozen players for The Wirecutter using the same intensive methods.

Who should get this

If you already have a Blu-ray player that works fine, you don’t need to upgrade. The only features that have been added to Blu-ray players recently, such as screen mirroring and 4K upconversion, are inessential. Your 4K TV will already upconvert video as well as any inexpensive player, and there are better ways to get your mobile device’s screen to your TV.

Some Blu-ray players, mostly from off-brand manufacturers, have stopped getting firmware updates. This is an issue because Blu-ray copy protection is still evolving, and newer discs can have new forms of copy protection, meaning they won’t be viewable on older, non-updated players. If you have one of these older players, find you can’t watch a new Blu-ray you bought, and can’t update your player, you may need to upgrade. Most players continue to get upgrades, though, and we have players that are over five years old that still play all new releases.

If you want to add streaming services (Netflix, etc), you’re better off getting a media streamer. They support far more services, have a better user interface, and are faster to use than a Blu-ray player. The streaming features of a Blu-ray player should be considered a bonus rather than a reason to upgrade.

Only having a DVD player is a good reason to upgrade. Blu-ray discs offer far better picture (and audio) quality than DVDs or streaming services.

For a second room, a Blu-ray player can do double-duty, providing disc playback and adding some basic streaming services to an existing TV.

How we picked and tested

The Blu-ray player market is shrinking. Companies like Toshiba no longer manufacture players, and these days, most of any given company’s models are nearly identical. They almost all have the same progression in features as you go up in price. Base models are wired-only. The level above adds Wi-Fi, then 3D, and then you get 4K upconversion. Adding 4K usually means adding a faster processor, making the overall experience better—but not to a degree that you’d want to pay for it.

Since most companies have stopped making players, it was easy to review the main models from the companies that still do: LG, Sony, and Samsung. Some other companies like Panasonic and Pioneer are making players, but their models were eliminated for reasons discussed below.

We consider Wi-Fi to be essential for most people. As mentioned earlier, Blu-ray players receive firmware updates to let them play the most recent movies. Movies also have special features that can require online access. Since most people use Wi-Fi around their house for connectivity, we assume you’ll want your player to have it as well. If you can easily run Ethernet to your BD player, you could save a few dollars with a wired player, but the price difference is minimal and cheaper players are also generally slower overall. (You do want some kind of connectivity: while you can do firmware updates with a USB drive, that’s much harder than having the player automatically notify you and install the update when it’s available.)

We wanted any player we picked to offer at least certain key streaming services. (Netflix, Amazon, and Hulu were considered essential in a player.) These services will look virtually identical across all Blu-ray players and have the same interface. As long as the player provides access to the services, it will work just fine for streaming.

Beyond that, additional features are not nearly as necessary. When we asked more than 1,500 readers about what they want in their future TV, less than 2 percent said they cared about 3D. Even if adding 3D to a Blu-ray player only costs $10, most people don’t seem to care. If you might want 3D in the future, spending $10 for it might be worthwhile. If not, pass. You do not need 4K upconversion, which converts 1080p Blu-ray discs to 4K resolution. Your 4K TV has this capability built-in, and it’s likely to do the job just as well as a $100 Blu-ray player. If you really want better 4K upconversion, the Oppo BDP-103D will do it for eight times the cost of our pick.

Unfortunately, most websites and magazines have stopped reviewing Blu-ray players. CNET published a total of two reviews this year, and they each covered models that included 3D. Sound & Vision also published a total of two reviews, and the models reviewed cost $2,000 and $5,000.

The tests

I rely heavily on test discs with objective test patterns. Flaws in players can show up on test discs that don’t show up (or are harder to see) on regular program material. The Spears & Munsil HD Benchmark, Version 2 provided the majority of the key test patterns. I also watched a selection of DVDs and Blu-ray movies to verify what the test patterns showed. Streaming services were utilized and tested, including load times.

For the most part, Blu-ray discs played back through any Blu-ray player are going to look identical.

You should know that for the most part, Blu-ray discs played back through any Blu-ray player are going to look identical, regardless of brand. If a player is described by a reviewer as having “blacker-blacks” or “extra sharpness” with a Blu-ray disc, then it (or the reviewer) is doing something wrong. (That did knock a couple of players out of competition.) The ideal player sends the bits on the disc unmodified. Thankfully, almost all players do exactly this.

Testing per-pixel color accuracy.

We’re able to verify this final claim using test patterns and a DVDO AVLabTPG test pattern generator. It lets me examine the output of a Blu-ray player on a per-pixel level and make sure it’s outputting the correct values. If a player didn’t pass this test, we would knock it off our list, but our picks all were perfect in this regard.

Note: The updated version of our favorite Blu-ray player, the Sony BDP-S3700, can now usually be found at a better price than the S3500. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3700, we think getting the newer model is worth it for most people.

The Sony BDP-S3500 is the Blu-ray player you should buy, because it has all essential features and the best interface while correctly outputting Blu-ray discs. Prior Sony players had a long, confusing list of services and features. This year’s Sony models are clear and easy to use. The S3500 includes Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections for getting online, has a compact form factor, does not feel laggy when using the interface, and plays back content perfectly.

Sony’s interface.

Making it easy to access discs or streaming services is the most important feature of a Blu-ray player. Past Sony players used the media crossbar interface first introduced in the PlayStation 3, which offered lots of streaming services but organized them in a huge list you had to scroll through. This was inconvenient. The new front page gives you an area to add your favorite apps and sources (including local media storage) and fast access to Blu-ray discs.

LG’s interface

Samsung and LG players also offer some customization, but not as effectively. LG lets you pick some favorite apps, but you can’t add as many to the front page as you can with the Sony. Many of the featured services, such as Amazon, are hidden on another layer behind the main page and can be tricky to find. Samsung has a custom screen that gives you recommendations, but it only works some of the time in my experience. Neither interface is as simple and easy to use as Sony’s.

Samsung’s interface

Wi-Fi and Ethernet connections make it easy to get the BDP-S3500 online. The Wi-Fi only supports 2.4GHz bands but has a two-by-two MIMO antenna setup that allows for stronger signals and faster speeds than the more common one-by-one antenna designs. The extra speeds offered by 5GHz Wi-Fi aren’t needed for streaming content, since it maxes out around 8 Mbps. Though 5GHz would improve signal reception in some situations, we didn’t feel this lack was an issue.

The BDP-S3500’s compact size makes it easy to put into an AV cabinet or smaller space. Previous Sony Blu-ray players had an angled top that made it impossible to put a remote or other device on top of it. This year they went to a plain box design that solves this problem. Other players we tested had a texture to the top and weren’t as easy to place things on top of.

The BSP-S3500 is relatively responsive to your actions when you use the remote. On the cheapest Blu-ray players (the ones without Wi-Fi), the interface drags. Netflix images will be slow to load as you try to navigate. The time between button-press and an action is longer than we’d want, and load times for apps are slow. The BDP-S3500 isn’t as fast as the most expensive players (or a media streamer), but it’s fast enough to not make you annoyed while using it.

It does what every well-designed Blu-ray player should do: output the contents of the disc without harming them in any way.

The BDP-S3500 is also accurate when playing back content. The image output over HDMI is identical to what’s on the disc. Prior Sony players had an issue here, but they’ve fixed this and now it’s perfect. It passed all the essential tests I gave it, so film and non-film content will look very good. It does what every well-designed Blu-ray player should do: output the contents of the disc without harming them in any way.

DVD performance on the Sony is as good or better than the other players as well. It has no issues handling the 3:2 interlaced cadence of films on DVD and does not suffer from the CUE issue many old DVD players did. The LG and Sony both look virtually identical on DVDs, while the Samsung has a slight bit of edge enhancement and ringing and is not quite as good.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

The Sony remote is nice and compact but not backlit. Since we often watch movies in the dark, a backlit remote would have been nice. I also wish some of the featured apps on the main page could be removed. Some of these are for Sony’s PlayStation Now streaming service, which has been very laggy in our testing. Some of the feature channels are for streaming channels that might be sponsored. This isn’t as bad as the video ads Panasonic started including a couple years ago, but it still isn’t ideal.

Sony (top) and Oppo (bottom) remotes in a lit room and dark room.

Sony also has a strange setup quirk where the player checks in to a Sony server for authorization every so often. A benefit is you can use their website to check the status of your player and revoke its online credentials for Netflix if necessary. The downside is that if the Sony servers are down, as has happened before, and you need to check in, you might not be able to watch Netflix. This drawback makes the authorization process not worth its small potential benefit, though in reality it’s not a huge deal. I’ve been using a Sony Blu-ray player in one room for years and have never been unable to stream content, though for serious streaming we’d still recommend getting a Roku, where this wouldn’t be an issue.

There’s also no longer a front panel interface on the BDP-S3500, just a single LED indicating if the player is turned on. Displaying the current time or status of a disc can only be done on-screen. Maybe most people don’t care anymore, but some will miss the readout.

Runner-up

The BDP-S5500 adds 3D, which most people don’t care about, but otherwise it has the same great interface as our main pick.

If the Sony BDP-S3500 isn’t available, the Sony BDP-S5500 is the next best choice. It’s basically the same as the BDP-S3500 but able to output 3D. The price difference is small, but if you don’t use 3D there isn’t any reason to pay any extra.

We’d pay for the S5500 if the S3500 isn’t available, even if 3D doesn’t matter, because of the better user interface over another brand’s possibly cheaper player.

The Oppo will give you the best picture from any disc, from DVD to Blu-ray, and has the best 4K upscaling available, but is short on streaming features.

If you want the best Blu-ray player out there, the Oppo BDP-103D is the pick. It lacks the wide variety of streaming options offered by most other players, instead placing all the emphasis on picture quality. Scaling of DVDs is superior to other players, with no artificial ringing around edges and no jaggies thanks to superior anti-aliasing. The 4K scaling is also top notch and better than the scaling built into almost all Ultra HD TVs. It’s the only Blu-ray player on the market (for now) that can upscale 4K content at 60 Hz. There’s a reason Oppo players are usually the benchmark units of AV reviewers.

The specialist features go on, including HDMI inputs to apply its scaling abilities to your cable box or streaming device, analog audio outputs for use with a soundbar or speakers, dual HDMI outputs, and support for the more obscure film cadences found in Anime and other foreign films.

The integrated Darbee video processing, which you can enable or disable, enhances the inter-pixel contrast to provide more pop and apparent detail to an image without the usual drawbacks like halos around objects.

Reviewers agree that the Oppo BDP-103D is the best player out there. In his review for Sound & Vision, Kris Deering declares that “Oppo once again raises the bar for what we expect from a Blu-ray player in today’s landscape”. The Darbee processing is one feature that really sells him as it “increases not only perceptual resolution but also perceived contrast” which “creates what looks like a more defined image.”

Adrienne Maxwell of Home Theater Review agrees that the Darbee processing is something for “the serious videophile who is looking to eke out that last bit of depth and detail from the image”.

Those looking for the ultimate should check out the Oppo.

As a high-end, more niche product, it also costs around $500 (at the time of writing) where our picks can be had for around $100. But it offers features no other player does. For most people, the Sony BDP-S3500 is plenty, but those looking for the ultimate should check out the Oppo.

Budget pick

The cheaper Sony lacks Wi-Fi and it isn’t as responsive as our pick, but it still has the good interface and movie playback.

If you don’t care at all about streaming or you’re fine with wired Ethernet, the Sony BDP-S1500 offers the same interface we like on the BDP-S3500. However, it lacks Wi-Fi, which makes firmware updates harder for most people. It also has a slower processor, so the user interface can really lag at times. All the budget players we tested have this same issue, which applies mostly to streaming services.

For most people, spending just a little bit more for the S3500 is the best option. If only watching movies on discs, though, the BDP-S1500 will be fine.

Care and maintenance

To get the best image from a Blu-ray player, you should leave the picture mode at the default option. Many players, including the Sony, offer picture modes like Theater or Bright Room. These adjust the picture so it no longer matches what’s on the disc. In all cases, the image is worse. If you want to adjust the image to match the room, do this in the TV, not the Blu-ray player.

The competition

The LG BP550 is the successor to our pick last year. This year, the BP550 is virtually unchanged from its predecessor, while the Sony got an improved UI and design to make it our pick. The LG has support for most streaming apps and an okay interface; it just isn’t quite as good as the Sony.

The LG BP350 lacks many of the features of the BP550, and at press time, it was going to save you a few dollars at the most.

The LG BP255 is their base-level player and costs more than the equivalent Sony or Samsung models. A version with Wi-Fi is almost the same price.

The Samsung BD-J7500 has 4K upconversion and every other feature, but is expensive, and most people don’t need its extra features (as we discussed).

The Samsung BD-J5700 has a worse user interface than the Sony and a ridged top surface that makes it hard to place anything on it. The curved design is meant to match their curved TVs and sound bars, but it also looks funny in a cabinet.

The Samsung BD-J5100 is even slower to load images and icons than the Sony BDP-S1500 and lacks the Sony’s smooth user interface.

The Panasonic DMP-BDT460 is feature-packed, but most of those features aren’t things you need. It’s too expensive as well.

All the Pioneer models cost too much. The BDP-80FD doesn’t offer anything you need over the Sony models. The BDP-85FD and BDP-88FD are meant to compete with the expensive players from Oppo. They offer better analog audio output, but most people don’t need that.

The Panasonic DMP-BD93 lacks Ethernet, which many people might want for streaming online content.

The Oppo BDP-105D offers no improvement over the BDP-103D in picture quality—just better analog audio.

What to look forward to

The updated version of our favorite Blu-ray player, the Sony BDP-S3700, was launched in September. Now you can usually find it at a better price than the S3500. Although we haven’t formally tested the S3700, we think getting the newer model is worth it for most people.

We’re finally starting to see Ultra HD Blu-ray players become reality. Coming from Samsung, Philips, Panasonic, Oppo, Sony, and others, these players fully utilize the potential of Ultra HD TVs. With 3840×2160 resolution, an expanded color gamut, high dynamic range, and less compression than streaming services, the video from these players should look and sound better than any Ultra HD content that home users have ever seen. At $400 for a player, these models are more affordable than DVD or Blu-ray players were at the start. The Samsung model we saw at CES 2016 even features dual HDMI outputs to work with non–HDCP 2.2 receivers.

Of course, without a TV that has Ultra HD Premium certification, a standard announced at CES 2016, you may not see all of those new colors or get the full impact of high dynamic range content. And some of the initial titles, such as Mad Max: Fury Road, were shot on 2K cameras, so you’ll gain only an expanded color gamut over the existing Blu-ray version. Odds are, the average person won’t see the benefits yet. But soon, with the right display and content, people will be seeing films at home in a way they never have before. Once we’re sure we have the complete list of models for the foreseeable future, we’ll begin testing these 4K players so that we can make our recommendation.

Wrapping it up

The Sony BDP-S3500 Blu-ray player offers the best user interface, all the essential features you need, and a decent selection of streaming content. It skips over unnecessary bells and whistles to provide a solid, high-quality, low price Blu-ray player.

Chris Heinonen writes about home audio and video for The Wirecutter. He also writes reviews and runs Reference Home Theater. Previously he has contributed to Secrets of Home Theater, Electronic House, AnandTech, and HDGuru. He lives in Portland, Oregon, and spends his free time chasing after his sons and running.

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